The Resident Evil 5 racism debate continues, for some reason

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For reasons known only to God and his brother Jim—ooh, sacrilege—plenty of people are still calling Resident Evil 5 racist. The list now includes The Atlantic and Eurogamer; don’t forget N’Gai Croal brought this issue to everyone’s attention last year. Me? I’m sorry, but I have bills to pay, and I simply cannot be bothered to argue, in print or otherwise, whether or some piece of garbage video game is racist or not. It may be, or it may not be. In any event, I don’t care. At least I’m honest about my total lack of interest in the subject, without having to mug for the camera, so to speak.

PC Gamer has a well-written counter argument to those who claim the game to be racist. I’ll just go ahead and block quote the main point:

Which, if you want to start tallying up who did what to whom, and when, and for how long, is all kinds of crazy. No one “owns” victimization at the hands of historically barbaric practices like slavery. Exploitation and subjugation is hardly the purview of a single ethnicity. Appealing to historical proportionality to dismiss one type of “negative” portrayal, e.g. the Spaniards in Resident Evil 4, while criticizing another, e.g. the multifarious “African” ethnicities in Resident Evil 5, is also both insulting and asinine.

Exactly. What good does it do to hold centuries-old grudges against one another? Am I supposed to hate present-day Spain for sending some boats down to Puerto Rico back in the day and taking over? Nope, don’t care.

In conclusion, as is painfully obvious, I have zero tolerance for people who shout RACISM! at the top of their lungs over every little thing. It just seems simple-minded. But maybe I’m crazy, I don’t know.